Along the British Road

by Eric Trevett

Some people within the labour Movement argue that the Labour Party is not a party of the working class but a bourgeois party that is is part of the capitalist state machine and that revolutionaries should oppose it in elections.
    We in the New Communist Party believe that these arguments are wrong and an example of good people getting frustrated at the right-wing policies of the Labour Government and anti-working class policies that pave the way for the return of a much more anti-working class government.
    We believe that automatically writing off the whole institution of the Labour Party as a result of the policies of the government arises from a subjective analysis and runs contrary to the efforts to promote working class unity in the day-to-day struggles and in the more profound struggles for revolution and socialism.
    Before the Labour Party was formed the skilled working class tended to give its allegiance to the Liberal Party. When it became obvious that party would not defend the interests of the trade union movement there was a struggle to establish the working class party.
    The socialist parties in those days joined with the trade union leaderships and founded the Labour Party to represent the working class interests in Parliament.
    Most trade union members pay the political levy and are therefore affiliate members of the Labour Party irrespective of whether they are communists or socialists.
    The right wing was also involved in that struggle and from that day to this has been in the ascendancy for most of the time in both the Labour Party and trade union organisations.
    But with all its weaknesses the Labour Party has, from time to time and under pressure from the trade union movement, achieved a number of reforms beneficial to the working class.
    After the First World War in 1919 Clause Four was written into the Labour Party constitution – calling for the working class to take control of the means of production, distribution and exchange.
    And after the Second World War the Labour government was swept into office and launched a massive council house building programme. The railways and the coal and steel industries were nationalised. And the National Health Service was introduced.
    What the Labour government did not do was to carry through a socialist revolution and give the working class state power.
    And its foreign policy served the interests of imperialism, was strictly anti-Soviet and supported the spread of nuclear weapons.
    Historically the labour movement (the Labour Party and the trade unions) has had a reformist leadership whose priority has been to perpetuate capitalism.
    The trade unions are the Labour Party’s main source of finance. Most of the trade unions and the Co-Operative party are affiliated to the Labour Party. This is the basis of why we say the Labour Party is a working class party.
    The labour movement organisationally is not divided into warring trade union groups, as in Europe where the labour movement has been formed by different elements: socialists, Catholics and communists and this has hindered the struggle for unity. The unity of the movement in Britain is very important to maintain; it is an asset we should be proud of.
    It is true that with the introduction of individual membership it has been easy for petty bourgeois elements to penetrate the party and advance their personal careers and this has reinforced the position of the right wing in the Labour Party and trade union movement.
    But the way to counter this is to promote working class unity around working class policies. It is not for organisations to contest the Labour Party’s position in national and local elections. In truth we have seen in recent years that such efforts are futile. Both the Socialist Alliance and George Galloway’s Respect Party have collapsed and so has Arthur Scargill’s Socialist Labour Party. The tragedy of that is that Arthur Scargill has isolated himself from the movement in which he was widely respected.
    From its inception the Communist Party of Great Britain has tried to affiliate to the Labour Party; this aim was abandoned only in 1975. One of the reasons why the CPGB failed to win affiliation with the Labour Party was that it stood candidates in elections against Labour and the broad labour movement.
    In hindsight we believe this policy to have been wrong even in the days when the party’s vote was high and Gallagher, Saklatvala and Phil Piratin were elected to Parliament.
    Since then and in the post-war period the bankruptcy of standing against Labour was plain to see. Since the Second World War the emphasis on campaigning in elections in the localities has gained priority over the industrial work of the party. At one time factory branches were being closed in an effort to involve more party members in electioneering.This weakened the capability of the trade unions to exert pressure on the government of the day.
    Our declared aim is to work to strengthen the working class and its political consciousness and fight for the right to affiliate to the Labour Party ourselves as communists.
    That is the way we believe and demonstrate that we are genuinely concerned to participate in the struggles for full employment, peace and socialism in a manner that unites the working class and its allies, especially student bodies.
    It would be wrong for us to stand candidates in national elections because it would be seen to be weakening the fight against the Tories and reaction. This has not led to any watering down of our party’s critique of the right wing in the Labour Party.
    Experience has shown that communists do best in industry and at the places of work because they are a genuine, integral part of the working class and are regarded as such. It is there that we often get communists elected to leading union positions out of respect for their militancy, profound wisdom and practical understanding in the unending struggles with the employers.
    In today’s struggle against the cuts and for nuclear disarmament we can see rising levels of struggle in the localities and we must remember that most class battles are won in the field of struggle and not in parliamentary debate.
    No one knows exactly how the socialist revolution will come about in this country but the struggle outside of Parliament, which is a bourgeois institution, will be far more decisive that the struggle inside Parliament.
    If and when our party succeeds in affiliating to the Labour Party it will bring the struggle for fundamental change and socialism to a new height.
    We therefore ask those people who view the Labour Party as anti-working class to re-evaluate their positions and support the struggle as we have outlined.

Long live Marxism-Leninism!

Long live the struggle for working class unity in Britain and throughout the world!

first published in 2010

The King's man returns

by Ben Soton

The King’s Man. 20th Century Studios, 2021. Dir: Matthew Vaughn. Starring: Rhys Ifans, Daniel Brühl, Charles Dance, Harris Dickinson, Matthew Goode, Robert Aramayo, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Gemma Arterton, Stanley Tucci, Ralph Fiennes, Tom Hollander and Djimon Hounsou. 131mins.

What have a Zulu warrior fighting with Rasputin to the tune of the 1812 overture, Mata Hari seducing Woodrow Wilson, and VI Lenin accepting the abdication of Nicholas II got in common? Firstly, they never happened and secondly, they all feature in {The King’s Man}, a film I have been waiting almost two years to see.
    Delayed eight times due to production issues and the impact of the Covid pandemic, {The King’s Man} is a prequel to the two earlier Kingsman films, Kingsman: The Secret Service (2014) and Kingsman: The Golden Circle (2017) – all based on the the Secret Service comic book series that debuted in 2012.
    The Kingsman Agency, a private security firm based in a Savile Row tailor’s shop, had its origins in the First World War. The Agency consists of its founder, the Earl of Oxford (Ralph Fiennes), his son Conrad (Harris Dickinson), a working-class English nanny (Gemma Arterton) and a Zulu warrior (Djimon Hounsou). Meanwhile, a sinister organisation, resembling James Bond’s Spectre, is hell bent on the destruction of the British Empire. To do this it employs Mata Hari, Gavrilo Princip, Grigori Rasputin and Lenin. Its plan is to get Russia out of the war and prevent the USA from entering it, thus leading to a German victory and British defeat.
    In recent years there has been talk of conspiracy theories and the film’s plot is ultimately based around one of them. Reactionaries have for years promoted the view that the First World War was the result of a sinister plot, either explicitly or implicitly linked to World Jewry. But in {The King’s Man} the sinister organisation intent on destroying the British Empire is has at its helm not a Jew but an enraged Scotsman.
    Right-wing historians often view the period from the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 to the outbreak of First World War as a largely peaceful period, signified by European and British dominance the globe. This is largely a myth. This imagined ‘golden age’ saw numerous wars between European Powers; perhaps most notably the Franco-Prussian conflict, as well as a number of minor conflicts. It also saw the plunder and carve-up of Africa; an important factor behind inter-imperialist conflict that led to the outbreak of hostilities in 1914. Arguably, the outbreak of hostilities in 1914 was simply the conclusion of those events not a break with them.
    The film also promotes the fiction that the forceful personality of Queen Victoria prevented conflict between the three countries headed by her grandsons: George V of Great Britain, Nicholas II of Russia and Wilhelm II of Germany. Tom Hollander manages to play all three roles, with George V portrayed in the most positive light. He mentions fear of revolution in Britain and not wanting to suffer the same fate of either of his cousins.
    Ultimately the 19th Century was a period when capitalism fully established itself as the dominant system on the planet and faced no competition from rival systems, namely socialism. If you watch this film, be aware of conspiracy theories and false historical narratives. Conspiracy theories are not simply the property of the tin-foil hat brigade.

Tax the Rich

By John Maryon

Britain's bloated capitalists will have heaved a huge sigh of relief when Jeremy Corbyn was removed as Labour Party leader, in the sure understanding that they would now continue to get richer as the poor get poorer.
    Since the 1970s both Tory and Labour governments have cut public spending in real terms. Vital services such as the NHS, public transport, local amenities and social services have become seriously underfunded. The money to pay for these services is raised by various forms of taxation but that levy should be fair. It is the wealthy who should be made to pay through progressive fiscal policies that can take more of the burden of taxation from the workers whilst ensuring that the rich are fully taxed.
    For many wealthy capitalists tax avoidance appears to be regarded as a sport. They may employ sharp-witted accountants to 'do' the books, establish overseas tax havens and arrange financial transactions to indicate seemingly lower profits to reduce their tax burden. It was recently claimed that cleaners, on basic low wages, were paying more tax than the highly paid staff who worked in the offices that they cleaned.
    In 1979 the top rate of tax was 83 per cent, today it is 45 per cent (46 per cent in Scotland). Council tax and VAT, both regressive measures, play an increasingly important role. Changes have ensured that more of the tax burden has shifted from the wealthy to those who are poor. The New Communist Party  maintains that the burden should be shifted from the backs of the workers on to the wealthy who can afford it. The party is opposed to regressive taxes such as VAT.
    All income tax payers will have their personal allowances frozen for a number of years, which represents a significant and rapidly increasing tax burden. As incomes rise, in an attempt to keep pace with inflation, millions of workers will not only pay a higher percentage of their income as tax but may also become victims of 'fiscal drag' as they become eligible for a higher rate tax bracket. These changes taken with historically high VAT rates and changes to National Insurance (NI) contributions will hit hard.
    With higher tax rates it could be expected that those with higher incomes would pay more taxes. Data from the Office of National Statistics (ONS) presents a rather different picture.
    In 2015–16 the poorest 10 per cent of households paid 42 per cent of their income as taxes of all categories. For the richest 10 per cent that figure was just 34. 3 per cent. The NCP seeks to improve the quality of people’s lives by reducing economic inequality and urges the Labour Party to make a commitment to do so by increasing the higher tax rates.
    Higher-rate tax payers are able to gain extended tax thresholds with Gift Aid. They are able to benefit as donations will extend the basic tax band, meaning that less tax is paid at a higher rate. For those earning over £100,000 even more relief is available – in this case the tax-free personal allowance reduction of £1 for every £2 of additional income is off-set by £1 for every £2 of gift aid.
    A fundamental question is to ask why the same proportion of tax is not paid on profits as on wages and should the liability be calculated in a similar manner. Any extra revenue generated would make it possible to boost pensions and benefits to help the community. Once full socialism is created many taxes may be reduced or abolished. Essential funding would come from the surplus value generated by publicly owned enterprises.
    In November 2020 Boris Johnson announced that defence spending at £41.5 billion per annum would increase by £16.5 billion over the next four years. Whilst public services continue to suffer, no questions are raised in regard to this dangerous and unnecessary waste of money. The Labour Party has said that the announcement signalled a welcome and long overdue upgrade.
    Further financial pressures are created by tax avoidance and evasion. According to HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) the amount of tax income lost through non-payment, avoidance and fraud amounted to £35 billion in 2019–20. The actual figure could be much higher.
    The government has faced criticism for raising national insurance tax on workers rather than directly taxing the wealthy. In 2021–22 the rate for Class 1 NI contributions is 12 per cent; this will increase to 13.5 per cent in 2022–23 and represents an increase of 1.25 per cent. The system is unfair because high earners do not pay at full starting rate, meaning that those with incomes exceeding £50,000 will pay proportionality less of their income in tax. The measures will place a heavier burden on the young whilst those with property and shares, who usually vote Tory, will be less affected.
    The NCP seeks a much fairer tax system; a fundamental change that goes far beyond any existing Labour Party pledges. Our Communist policy calls for a wide range of essential measures:

• PAYE personal tax allowances to be increased substantially to exempt low wage earners from tax liability.
• The employee’s upper earnings limit for NI contributions should be abolished so that higher earners pay their fair share.
• Employer’s NI should be raised to 20 per cent.
• New PAYE tax bands to be introduced for higher earners, with a rate of 98 per cent for those earning over £120,000.
• Capital gains should be treated as income.
• The abolition of gift aid.
• Removal of tax on domestic fuel.
• Taxes on insurances to be withdrawn.
• Government grants to local authorities to be increased to pre-1979 values.
• Drastically cut defence spending, which exists to support US hegemony
• Corporation tax to be increased and rebates abolished.

Communist demands for a progressive tax system would redistribute wealth. Making the rich disgorge a fraction of their wealth would go a long way to enable the repair of social provision that has been cut back since 1979. The ruling class will not give up their inflated share of wealth and it is up to the workers to step up the class struggle to achieve justice.

Calm returns to Kazakhstan

getting ready to leave

by New Worker correspondent

An uneasy calm has returned to the former Soviet republic of Kazakhstan following a week of riots that pushed the country to the brink of civil war. The draconian price hikes have been suspended for six months. The hastily despatched Russian-led peace-keeping force is preparing to leave, and the government is trying to pick up the pieces following days of looting and violence that ended with 18 law enforcement officers and hundreds of civilians dead.
    Some 10,000 people have been detained amidst the unrest that began when the government doubled the price for liquefied petroleum gas and bumped up the tariffs on water supply, sanitation and heating at the beginning of the new year. But the mass street protests supported by the independent unions and the underground socialist movements soon turned ugly after an angry mob torched the presidential palace in the former capital, Almaty, whilst gunmen emerged to confront the police and security forces in the new capital, Nur Sultan, and many other cities in Kazakhstan.
    Who’s behind it nobody knows. A former Kazakh minister living in Paris has offered to lead the protest movement. Mukhtar Ablyazov, who fled the country after being accused of stealing $6 million from a Kazakh bank, sees himself as the "leader" of the ongoing protests and claims that he has routinely consulted people on the ground in Almaty on tactical issues. He says he’s ready to return to his homeland and lead a “provisional government” once the protests reach the right magnitude.
    The Russia media say the rapid descent into bloodshed shows the hidden hand of the Western powers trying to orchestrate regime-change in this strategic, oil-rich Central Asian republic, whilst the Tokayev government openly accuses sectarian Muslim movements of being behind some of the violence.
    ISIS and Al-Qaeda are said to be operating in the south of the country, and a man from neighbouring Kyrgyzstan who was arrested in Almaty told the police he was paid $200 to cross the border and take part in the protests.
    When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the corrupt Kazakh communist government of Nursultan Abishuly Nazarbayev carried on Yeltsin-style to plunder the country in the name of the ‘free market’ for nearly three decades. Whilst most Kazakhs were reduced to near-poverty, these former communists amassed untold riches and spent millions more on ludicrous vanity projects designed to boost the international image of the Nazarbayev clan.
    Although the “Leader of the Nation” stepped down in 2019, Nazarbayev kept his seat on the powerful State Security Committee until now. Many now believe that his successor, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, has taken advantage of the chaos to finally shunt the old man into political oblivion.
    In Moscow the decision to send peace-keeping troops to Kazakhstan has divided the communist forces. All of them support the basic demands of the protesters. But the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF) says the intervention was an “adequate and timely measure” to prevent an imperialist “colour revolution” whereas the much smaller Russian Communist Workers Party gives full support to the Socialist Movement of Kazakhstan, which is calling for “organised resistance to military-police terror” in their country.
    The Union of Communist Parties – CPSU, however, warns that: “Having unleashed the bloody massacres in Iraq, Libya, Syria, Afghanistan, global imperialism, led by the United States, is getting closer and closer to the borders of Russia and Belarus. Hybrid war against them is already being waged on the territories of Ukraine, Moldova and the Transcaucasian states. Now the Central Asian republics are on the line. Today, it is especially important not to allow the state sovereignty of the largest of them-Kazakhstan-to be undermined. Terrorist centres that are generously financed from abroad have been active there for a long time. It is they who play a key role in fomenting pogroms, destabilising the system of government, and brutal massacres of law enforcement officers and soldiers…we support those political forces of the Republic which, defending social justice, are now resolutely fighting against the looting and lawlessness which prevailed in these days of January.”

A walk in the garden

The problem that most incorrigible liars have is their inability to distinguish reality from their own fantasies. Boris Johnson admits he was at a Downing Street lockdown garden party and gives grovelling apology but still seems unaware that the game’s up for his premiership.
    But this isn’t about the genuine wave of outrage at the latest revelations about parties in Downing Street while the rest of us were living under the Covid lockdown regime. Nor is it really about lying in Parliament though this is, to be sure, frowned on by the grandees on both sides of the House, as it gives them all a bad name.
    What it really boils down to is the fact that the key players amongst the ruling class within the corridors of power have no further use for Boris Johnson. He’s incapable of restoring the “special relationship” with US imperialism let alone building a post-Brexit working understanding with Franco-German imperialism. His antics have become an embarrassment and he’s an electoral liability that needs to be replaced before the next general election. Even Sir Keir Starmer is calling on Johnson to go and it’s not often that he gets things right.
    But as usual Starmer is incapable of exploiting the political crisis for Labour’s benefit. Though Labour is ahead, for once, in the opinion polls this is only down to Tory disaffection with their own leader rather than any genuine swing to Labour. No one knows what Starmer stands for apart from supporting Israel and loathing the Corbynistas.
    Johnson clearly is on hjs way out but there’s plenty of leading Tory wannabees ready and able to take Johnson’s place to lead their party into the next election. Starmer also needs to go but who is going to replace him?

Street protests work

The Israeli Elbit arms factory in Oldham has closed following a sustained campaign by Palestine Action that has cost the company millions of pounds worth of damages. While Elbit simply say they’ve sold the plant as part of their restructuring strategy in the United Kingdom the Palestine campaigners say it was their prolonged campaign that forced their hand.
    The Elbit Ferranti factory in Oldham is one of ten owned by Elbit in the UK. A majority of it was sold to British firm TT Electronics for £9 million.The Elbit Group makes drones and it is responsible for 80 percent of Israel’s military drones. The Israeli company’s products have been used to target Palestinians in Gaza and equip Israel’s apartheid wall with surveillance technology.
    Over the past 18 months Palestine Action supporters have blockaded the plant sprayed the premises with blood-red paint, smashed windows and occupied the entry to the factory. Some 36 people have been arrested but no one has been charged with a crime or prosecuted yet.
    This sort of direct action, which is a stage up from sit-down protests, requires the sort of agility and fitness needed to scale buildings and protest in all weathers. Some of us may not be up for this sort of robust protest but we can all support the view of the Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network that said this "victory speaks to the successful nature of strong direct action to impose a meaningful and material cost upon the profiteers of the colonisation of Palestine and Israeli war crimes against the Palestinian people".

Heroes of the Korean War!

by Keith Bennett

The Battle at Lake Changjin, directed by Chen Kaige, Tsui Hark and Dante Lam, premiered at the Beijing International Film Festival on 21st September 2021 and was released in China on 30th September. As part of its international distribution it has been showing at selected cinemas all over the world. With a budget of some $200 million it is the most expensive Chinese film ever made. The acclaim with which it has been received however, has also made it the highest grossing film of 2021, the highest grossing film in Chinese history and the highest grossing non-English language film.
    At just two minutes under three hours in length, the film is a revolutionary epic, with the main action centred around the Changjin Lake area of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) in the bitterly cold winter of 1950, shortly after the Chinese People’s Volunteer Army (CPVA) intervened to help the Korean people during the conflict the Chinese call the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea.
    Confronted with the harshest natural and climatic conditions, forced to survive on starvation rations and faced with an enemy that was better trained, better equipped, better fed, better armed and with complete mastery of the skies, the Chinese troops “fearing neither hardship nor death”, to use the well-known Chinese expression, continued to forge ahead in the most courageous and ingenious of ways. Armed with the element of surprise, and although making the ultimate sacrifice, by successfully blowing up the Shuimen Bridge they scored the most decisive victory, ultimately ensuring the achievement of China’s objectives in the war.
    A great strength of the film is how it weaves into a seamless whole the grand politics of national leadership and vital decisions of war and peace with the lives, sentiments and aspirations of the masses of poor and working people, those whom Chairman Mao always insisted were the real heroes. We see Mao addressing his comrades and arguing his case. We see him absorbed in contemplation. We see his close comradely relations with the CPVA commander Peng Dehuai (something that tragically was not to survive the later twists and turns of the revolution), and we see the interplay between Mao Zedong, his son Mao Anying and Peng.
    Already a seasoned revolutionary in his own right, Anying is determined to be amongst the first to volunteer for the Korean front. Peng tries his best to dissuade him. He doesn’t want the Chairman to be left without his son. But Anying cannot accept that his family should not make the same sacrifices that countless other families throughout China would make. It is Mao Zedong who tells Peng to “let him go”, not because he doesn’t love his son, but because he loves all the sons and daughters of the Chinese working people – something that recalls Stalin’s attitude when his son was held a prisoner of war by the Nazis and which reputedly originally inspired the title of Arthur Miller’s 1946 play All my Sons.
    This interplay may be said to constitute a bridge to the depiction of the mass of Chinese people in war and revolution. The film begins with People’s Liberation Army soldier Wu Qianli returning to join his illiterate parents and younger brother in their home village in Zhejiang province and carrying an urn containing the ashes of his other brother Wu Baili, who has fallen as a revolutionary martyr. Although Qianli will return to the army, he assures his worried mother, who has already lost one son, that the war is over and there are no more battles to be fought. As a result of land reform, the family have been given a modest amount of land as their own and Qianli’s great dream and plan is to build there a home fit for his parents to live in.
    He has scarcely reached home however, before he is called to leave at once for Korea. Again relating the vital questions of international politics to the daily concerns and needs of the people, the point is made that those who have at last gained their own home and land must now fight to repel those who would come and take it away. In a separate scene, Mao opines that the country has only just been liberated. There is so much to do to build a new China. He doesn’t want to fight another war at this time. But if, he presciently observes, this war brings China decades or even a century of peace, then it will be worth it. Moreover, Mao observes, by sending its military forces to Taiwan, the USA has already committed aggression against China.
    Later, in the terrible conditions of battle, the soldiers console themselves with the thought that their sacrifice will mean that their children will not need to endure the horrors of conflict. They will enjoy a better life in peace. For this reviewer, it was a touching vindication of that to be able watch the film in a cinema in London’s West End, with an audience otherwise made up of young students from China.
    Much of the film’s human story is centred on the relationship between Wu Qianli and his younger brother Wu Wanli. Wanli’s brother is a people’s army soldier and a revolutionary martyr, whilst, at least initially, he is a mischievous, somewhat ill-disciplined but in reality quite naïve peasant boy, who starts out by thinking that war is some kind of adventure or game.
    Qianli is horrified that Wanli has sneaked away to enlist together with him. Wanli’s progression from naïve teenager to heroic soldier and revolutionary, and not just in a military sense, but for example in learning to write a self-criticism, in a sense recalls the evolution of Pavel Korchagin in the classic Soviet novel How the Steel was Tempered. Towards the end, it is noted that the Wan in Wanli means ten thousand, indicating that his example will be followed by countless revolutionary successors.
    The developing relationship between Qianli and some of his closest comrades on the one hand, and Wanli on the other, plays out against the lives and interactions of the company as a whole. The good-natured ribbing conceals but also highlights and nurtures a deep camaraderie characterised by a willingness to sacrifice for others, both for the person next to you and for the wider cause, a profound humanism and a genuine comradely love. The resulting political synthesis of revolutionary heroism and class hatred, of patriotism and proletarian internationalism, becomes the living embodiment of Chairman Mao’s great call to Resist America, Aid Korea, Safeguard the Motherland and Defend our Homes.
    The film provides a vivid, intense and at times harrowing depiction of just what it means to fight with next to nothing against almost insuperable and apparently hopeless odds – in exposed terrain at the mercy of US bombers and in temperatures that often fall to more than minus 40 degrees Celsius, compounded by a lack of food and adequate warm clothing. And to triumph in the face of such adversity. There is a poignant contrast between the lavish Thanksgiving dinner enjoyed by the US troops at their base with the Chinese volunteers attempting to ward off starvation with a handful of small, rotten and undercooked or raw potatoes – sharing with each other what very little they had. But no amount of roast turkey with all the trimmings can obscure the dawning realisation that Douglas MacArthur’s boast, seen towards the start of the film, of victory by Thanksgiving and home by Christmas was not going to materialise.
    The note of caution raised at the start, that behind Kim Il Sung stood Mao Zedong and Stalin, was arrogantly dismissed with chauvinistic deprecation of peasant fighters. But the history of the 20th Century is in major part a history of Asian peasants fighting and defeating US imperialism and its stooges – in China, Korea, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. They were often equipped with the most rudimentary of weapons – but they were also equipped with the most advanced revolutionary science of Marxism-Leninism and the leadership of a communist party. Of course, both the fact that China chose to make this film at this time, and the fact of its phenomenal box office success, is not unrelated to the New Cold War unleashed by imperialism against China and other socialist and anti-imperialist countries – a cold war that, just as it did in Korea in 1950, can all too easily become an outright military conflict. For Asian workers and peasants in power, however, the days of fighting with rudimentary weapons are over. People’s China and Democratic Korea are both proud nuclear powers, ready and able to defend their independence, sovereignty and socialist gains, as Malcolm X memorably put it, “by any means necessary”.
    It should not be the job of a reviewer to say too much about a film’s ending but suffice to mention that even a US commander is finally moved to salute the courage of the CPVA troops and to opine that it is impossible to prevail against men with such a degree of motivation. This symbolism brought to mind the words of Comrade Fidel Castro, speaking about Bobby Sands and his fellow hunger strikers in the north of Ireland: “Let tyrants tremble before men who are prepared to face death after more than 60 days without food.”


The Battle at Lake Changjin is currently freely available on YouTube and Vimeo.

Beating the virus

The lights are turning off and the decorations that brightened up an otherwise sombre Christmas are coming down. Last year we were struggling to overcome the Covid plague that was sweeping through the world. Covid is still with us but at least some of the jabbed population have been spared this time round. But the battle to beat the virus continues.
    Covid-19 is having an unprecedented effect on working life. Trade unions can play a vital role in keeping workplaces safer, and keeping workers’ informed of their rights.
    Trade unions are challenging employers and the government over inadequate sick pay offers, failure to provide personal protective equipment (PPE) and testing, and the urgent need to safeguard jobs in disrupted industries.
    Tory politicians bleat on about the need to keep the offices, factories and transport going but this will only work with the support of the TUC and the rest of the labour movement. Boris Johnson should remember that. So should Sir Keir Starmer.

Blair gets a gong

Boris Johnson can take some comfort at the continuing furore surrounding Tony Blair’s knighthood over the New Year. Another knight, Sir Keir Starmer, says "Tony Blair deserves the honour, he won three elections, he was a very successful Prime Minister" but Blair still can’t show his face at any labour movement event.
    The hundreds of thousands clamouring for Blair to be stripped of his award clearly shows that the former Labour leader is more hated than Johnson though that, in itself, is nothing to be proud of these days.
    While the petition with over half a million signatures and still growing is only of symbolic value, it has it has, at least for the time being, halted the Blairite drive to rehabilitate their old leader and his “New Labour” project.

Black lives do matter

We can likewise take comfort at the acquittal of the four Bristol protesters charged with “criminal damage” after the statue of a prominent local slave-dealer was toppled and dumped into the harbour last summer.
    The campaign to remove the statue of Edward Colston, a merchant who made a fortune out of the slave trade in the 17th century began in the 1920s. He was involved in the transportation of over 80,000 slaves from Africa to the New World of which almost 10,000 were children. An estimated 19,000 died on ships bound for the Caribbean and the Americas.
    Colston spent part of his blood-money on alms houses, hospitals and schools and in Victorian days he was held up as benefactor and a pillar of the Anglican church. In Bristol streets, buildings and even a local bun were named after him. But times have changed and it all came to a head last year during the Black Lives Matter protests that followed to killing of George Floyd in America last year.

The Red Buttons

by Ben Soton

Red-Button Men: Red-Button Years: Volume 3 by Ken Fuller (2021). Independently published. Paperback:‎ 365pp; RRP: £12.99. Kindle: 484pp; £5.99.

This is the final instalment of Ken Fuller’s trilogy, now available on Amazon and Kindle.The ironically named novel sees the end of the London & Provincial Union of Licenced Transport Workers (LPU), known as the ‘Red Button Union’. In 1919 the LPU merged with the more moderate and less democratic Amalgamated Association of Tramway & Vehicle Workers, known as the Blue Button Union, to form the United Vehicle Workers (UVW).
    The novel’s title is a reference to those activists who attempted to continue the militant and democratic traditions of the Red Button Union into the new organisation.
    Once again Fuller introduces real historic figures such as Ernest Bevin, Sylvia Pankhurst and Theodore Rothstein, alongside fictional characters such as Mickey Rice.
    Rice is the ultimate personification of a principled trade union activist, devoid of any opportunism, either from the right or left. This contrasts with both Sylvia Pankhurst and Ernest Bevin.
    Pankhurst, a militant suffragette and socialist, formed her own party rivalling the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB), and sided with the so-called left-communists who opposed Lenin’s New Economic Policy needed to re-build the Soviet Union in the aftermath of the Civil War. Bevin became a fervent anti-communist and the architect of the 1945 Labour government’s foreign policy based on subservience to US imperialism.
    The book covers the period from 1919–1922. It includes the formation of the CPGB although, arguably, insufficient attention is given to this historically important event whilst perhaps too much attention is given to the actions of Ms Pankhurst.
    Significant to the novel are the events of Black Friday 1921; a reference to 15th April 1921 when the infamous leader of the National Union of Railwaymen, JH Thomas, failed to come to the aid of the miners. Black Friday led to a series of setbacks with several unions, including the UVW, forced to accept wage restraint. This in turn led to demands for a breakaway union, the Trams Omnibuses & Tubes, known as the TOT union.
    The novel goes into considerable detail regarding the finer points of negotiations between the UVW and the employers. On the one hand, this shows extensive research on the part of the author. On the other hand however, at times I wondered if this was not too detailed for what is after all a novel and not a reference book.
    Unlike the earlier two novels, Love and Labour and Romance and Revolution there is less reference to the romantic adventures of the main character Mickey Rice, who is now happily married to Annette, the daughter of a leading Belgian Communist.
    Ultimately, the UVW amalgamated with several other unions in 1922 to form the Transport & General Workers Union (TWWU), which in 2007 formed the basis of the general union Unite. Red-Button Men is a fitting finale to both an informative and still readable set of novels.

China, democracy, justice and the communist movement

 Last month a number of communist parties including the New Communist Party took part in an online conference organised by the Communist Party of China around the theme of Democracy, Justice, Development and Progress. This is the contribution from NCP leader Andy Brooks.

First of all I would like to thank the organisers of this conference for giving me the opportunity to say a few words about our Party’s views on democracy, the issue of the day that the imperialists are once again trying to use as a smokescreen to mask their plans for world domination.
    Their latest stunt has been to hold an online Summit for Democracy, organised by the USA to provide a platform for a new propaganda offensive against People’s China and the rest of the world that refuses to submit to Western economic and political control. Whilst this virtual summit posed as a forum for free debate on democracy and human rights, the participants were all hand-picked by the White House and the outcome was therefore totally predictable.
    The attendees, including some of the worst human rights abusers in the world, such as Israel, Ukraine and, of course, the USA itself, are closing ranks around a new anti-communist campaign to prop up the austerity regimes of the ailing capitalist system that is floundering in a world-wide slump that began in 2008.
    American politicians like to pose as defenders of what they call the “free world”. During the Cold War they portrayed their country as some sort of capitalist utopia and claimed that their “American dream” summed up the hopes of working people throughout the world. It wasn’t true then and it certainly isn’t true now.
    The ruling circles in the USA rejoiced when the counter-revolutions that they had worked so long to achieve took place in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. They told us that socialism was finished and that history was dead. They preached about the superiority of the capitalist system. But now they cannot point to a single country where it works – least of all the USA, whose cities, where millions live in abject poverty, are plagued by drugs and crime.
    They say that socialism means dictatorship and that capitalism stands for freedom. But it is freedom only for the exploiters to continue to rob and plunder working people across the globe to ensure that a tiny handful of parasites can live the lives of Roman emperors on the backs of the millions upon millions of working people.
    They claim that they stand for intellectual freedom – but it is the freedom of the straitjacket and the dungeon. They preach this freedom with their bombers and drones, their special forces and blockades against all those who dare to stand up for themselves. We see what the ruling class mean by freedom in occupied Palestine, Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Ukraine.
    They talk of peace whilst spending billions upon billions on weapons of mass destruction to back up their blockades, embargoes and trade wars on countries striving to develop their own independent economies.
    They say they have free speech and democracy, but it’s democracy and freedom only for themselves. If the Western powers really were democratic, we would expect to see the majority of representatives in their bourgeois parliaments and assemblies drawn from the majority of the population – the working people. In fact, outside the ranks of the communists, you could count the number of workers in parliament on your fingers.
    Bourgeois democracy is democracy only for the exploiters. It’s dictatorship in all but the formal sense for the exploited. Bourgeois elections are used so that the smallest number of people can manipulate the maximum number of votes. Parliaments may reflect the divisions in the ruling class but ultimately all these assemblies are a fraud to mask the fact that bourgeois government rests on the bourgeois state, which exists solely to serve the interests of the ruling class. Whether it’s bogus bourgeois democracy or open bourgeois dictatorship depends on the economic situation and the balance of forces in any given country.
    We meet today in a world where the primary contradiction is between US imperialism and the rest of the world it seeks to dominate. But a new economic and political counter to US‑led imperialism is being built by China, whose Belt and Road initiative provides an alternative to imperialism’s so‑called free trade agreements and “partnerships” that solely serve the interests of the trans‑national corporations of the imperialist world.
    In the past China’s wealth was the preserve of a ruthless, feudal ruling class. These days China’s wealth is being used to finally eradicate the last vestiges of poverty, raise the standard of living of everyone in the people’s republic, and help the development of the Third World through genuine fair trade and economic assistance.
    The Chinese revolution that established the people’s government on 1st October 1949 has transformed the country that was then the poorest in the world. Since then China has risen from being a weak semi-feudal, semi-colonial country to become a force for peace in the global arena with the second largest economy in the world.
    People’s China, the fifth permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, is the only veto-power actively supporting proposals for multilateral nuclear disarmament. Pledging never to be the first to use nuclear weapons in any conflict, China stands for the complete prohibition and total destruction of all atomic weapons.
    China, backed by many other countries, has repeatedly challenged the West to implement the entire non‑proliferation treaty, which was signed in 1968 not only to halt nuclear proliferation but also committed the signatories to work towards universal nuclear disarmament. In the meantime China calls on all the major nuclear‑weapon states to abandon their policy of nuclear deterrence.
    The struggle to abolish nuclear weapons is crucial for the survival of humanity. But central to averting a Third World War is the need to eliminate the causes of war. And that is why communists have always understood that the struggles for peace and socialism are indivisible.
    Whilst millions of people scrabble to earn a living just to keep a roof over their heads, a tiny elite live lives beyond the reach and often beyond the imagination of most workers. Only socialism can end this. Only through socialism can the will of the masses, the overwhelming majority of the people, be carried out. Only socialism and mass democracy – not the sham democracy of the bourgeoisie – can end the class system and free working people from their slavery.
    The great socialist philosophers, Marx and Engels, spent much of their creative lives in Britain as practical revolutionaries. They knew they would never see socialism in their own lifetimes, but they never doubted the inevitability or the necessity for change. And the torch of freedom that fanned the fires of the Paris Commune lit the flames of the 1917 Russian Revolution that continues to blaze in Democratic Korea and Cuba, and the people’s democracies in Laos. Vietnam and above all, the People’s Republic of China.
    After 70-plus years of practice and development, China has successfully charted a path of democracy with Chinese characteristics, which suits China’s national conditions and meets its people’s aspirations. It is called the whole-process people’s democracy.
    In People’s China we see mass democracy at work. Back in 2014 Communist Party of China (CPC) leader Xi Jinping said: "The very purpose of the CPC's leadership of the people in developing people's democracy is to guarantee and support their [the people’s] position as masters of the country.”
    The people administer state affairs and manage economic, cultural and social affairs through various channels and in various ways. In practice, more than 99 per cent of Chinese citizens over the age of 18 have the right to vote and stand for election.
    Voter turnout is around 90 per cent in every direct election of deputies to the county- and township-level people’s congresses. The will of the overwhelming majority of the people is fully reflected in the election results. Apart from democratic elections, people have the right to participate in the management of national and social affairs in day-to-day political activities.
    This is the people’s power that enables the Chinese people to improve their lives in a concrete and realistic way. Democracy is not an ornament used for decorative purposes. It should be used to address concerns of the people.
    Whole-process people’s democracy favours substance over form. It is genuine democracy and not the shameful charade that passes for it in the West. It is, in fact, the will of the people.
    Or as the Chinese communist leader Xi Jinping says, whole-process people's democracy in China is "the broadest, most genuine, and most effective socialist democracy" safeguarding the fundamental interests of the people.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

 All the best for 2022

the next issue of the New Worker will be out on Friday 7th January 2022

Deck the halls…

The decorations are up, the Christmas lights are on and the costumed Santas are ho, ho hoing back in the grottos of departmental stores up and down the country. But the shadow of the plague once again hovers over the land as we don on our masks and queue for booster jabs, waiting for the almost inevitable fourth lockdown in the New Year.
    They tell us that this is the season of goodwill. Boris Johnson, for one, will certainly hope so now that the knives are out for him as he’s no longer of any further use to the ruling class.
    The back-stabbers include the grandees he purged in the run-up to the Brexit election of 2019 as well as those who see the scandal-ridden Tory leader as a political liability and the obstacle to restoring the “special relationship” that they believed once existed between British and American imperialism.
    The Prime Minister, who has always believed in his ability to talk his way out of any embarrassing situation, is clearly in deep trouble. Johnson crawls to the Americans over Assange and nukes to Australia, but he cannot see that unless he honours the agreement with the Irish government and the rest of the European Union that he signed up to in the first place he’s never going to get into Biden’s good books.
    Johnson may not want to rock the boat with his Ulster Unionist allies but others, including many in his own ranks, are not prepared to accept an endless Ulster veto on British foreign policy – particularly now their votes are no longer needed to maintain the Conservative majority in the House of Commons.
    We are, supposedly, celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ, the founder of Christianity. And as usual, the great and the good will make their annual obeisance to the Nazarene, whom they claim to worship, but whose teachings they ignore for the other 364 days of the year.
    We’ll get more drivel from the clergy, who reserve their most pious platitudes for the supposed birthday of the ‘Prince of Peace’ on 25th December. But like the Pharisees, whom they pretend to scorn, these charlatans ignore the teachings of their Master who drove the money-changers out of the Temple and said “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God”.
    But the days when people listened to the rich men who told us that the greatest virtue of humanity was the possession of the largest amount of money are over.
    Nothing demonstrates the superiority of the socialist system over capitalism more than the response to the Covid crisis over the last two years. Democratic Korea has kept COVID‑19 completely out of the country. The people’s governments in China, Cuba, Laos and Vietnam have successfully beaten back the plague whilst hundreds of thousands die and many, many more are struck down by the coronavirus plague in the imperialist heartlands of Western Europe and North America.
    The ruling class maintains that capitalism is the only game in town. And it is – but only for themselves. Capitalism, in the final analysis, is simply a system designed to perpetuate the rule of the landowners, industrialists and capitalists to ensure that a tiny handful of parasites can live the lives of Roman emperors on the backs of the millions upon millions of working people.
    There is only one solution to the capitalist crisis and that is socialism. Let’s make that our resolution for the New Year. Speed the day!

Joint statement on democracy and common development

 

Joint Statement of World Political Parties, Social Organisations and Think Tanks on making Independent Efforts to Explore the Path Toward Democracy and Working Together to Promote Common Development

The New Communist Party of Britain, together with 355 other political parties as well as social organizations and think tanks from 140 countries endorsed this statement at video conference organised by the Communist Party of China in Beijing this week

I. We are of the view that the world we live in is a diverse and colorful one. Diversity is what defines the fascinating feature of human civilisations, and indeed the source of vitality and dynamism for the development of the world. The ways and means of realising democracy are varied. Since different countries and regions may not necessarily share the same history, culture, social system and development stage, there does not exist any system of democracy or pattern of development that is applicable to all countries. The practice of judging the rich variety of political systems around the world by a single yardstick, or observing the colorful political civilisations of the humanity from a monochromatic sight, is in itself undemocratic. Nor is it conducive to development.

II. We are of the view that the best way to evaluate whether the political system of a country is democratic and efficient is to observe whether the succession of its leading body is orderly and in line with the law, whether all people can manage state affairs and social, economic and cultural affairs in conformity with legal provisions, whether the public can express their requirements without hindrance, whether all sectors can efficiently participate in the country’s political affairs, whether national decisions can be made in a rational, democratic way, whether professionals in all fields can be part of the team of national leadership and administrative systems through fair competition, whether the ruling party can serve as a leader in state affairs in accordance with the Constitution and laws, and whether the exercise of power can be kept under effective restraint and supervision.

III. We are of the view that the judgement on whether a country is democratic hinges on whether the people can become the real masters of the country. While it is necessary to observe whether the people can enjoy the right to vote, it is even more important to observe whether their right of extensive participation is guaranteed. While it is necessary to observe what verbal promises the people get during election campaigns, it is even more important to observe how many of the promises are fulfilled after elections. While it is necessary to observe what political procedures and rules are stipulated in regulations and laws, it is even more important to observe whether these regulations and laws are rigorously enforced. While it is necessary to observe whether the exercise of power follows democratic rules and procedures, it is even more important to observe whether the exercise of power is truly subject to the supervision and restraint by the people.

IV. We are of the view that democracy is the right of all peoples, rather than an exclusive privilege of the few. The judgement on whether a country is democratic or not should be made by their people. We stand opposed to acts that interfere in the internal affairs of others in the name of democracy.

V. We are of the view that the point of departure as well as the goal of the development of human society should be to improve people’s wellbeing and to achieve well-rounded human development. The promotion of democracy should focus on the continuous realisation of people’s aspiration for a better life and the upliftment of their sense of fulfillment, happiness and security. Currently, countries need to especially strengthen cooperation in the fields of poverty alleviation, food security, COVID-19 response and vaccines, development financing, climate change and green development, industrialisation, digital economy and connectivity, and to accelerate the implementation of the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, so that concentrated efforts are devoted to solve problems of the greatest, most immediate and most practical concern to the people. All countries and all peoples of the world deserve the opportunity and right to development. Efforts need to be made to promote inclusive development and ensure that no country is left behind.

VI. We are of the view that to make international relations more democratic is the trend of the times and the only way to realise this lies in putting true multilateralism into practice. As mankind is faced with various challenges and global issues, the effective response thereto can only be found in more inclusive global governance, more effective multilateral mechanism and more proactive regional cooperation. Better performance in the practice of multilateralism can always lead to better answers to the common problems facing humanity.

VII. We are of the view that efforts to build a human community with a shared future point the right direction to the development and progress of civilisation. The shared human values of peace, development, fairness, justice, democracy and freedom must serve as guidance in the endeavour to build such a community with a strong sense of responsibility for the future of humankind, so that countries with different social systems, ideologies, histories, cultures and levels of development can share interests, rights and responsibilities in international affairs and work together to build a better world. Deeply aware of the joint mission placed on our shoulders to promote democracy and improve people’s livelihood, we undertake to work hand in hand to rise above all kinds of differences, promote exchanges and mutual learning, enhance mutual understanding and build broad consensus, so that we continue to make our due contribution to the people’s wellbeing, national development, world peace and human progress.

Interesting Times

Soaring energy prices; fears of a new winter lockdown as the new Omicron Covid variant spreads through Britain and almost daily reports in the mainstream media of the hypocrisy and sleaze that surrounds the Johnson administration. It’s not surprising that the Tory vote crashed at the Old Bexley & Sidcup by-election last week.
    Though the Tories held this true blue bastion in the commuter belt of south-east London the Conservative majority was slashed from almost 19,000 to just 4,478 votes. Reform UK, the successor to Nigel Farage’s old UKIP party bagged 6.6 per cent of the poll and there was even a 7.4 per cent swing to Labour – though some say this was largely due to the fact that Sir Keir Starmer had not shown his face during the campaign.
    Now we’re told of a Christmas party at Downing Street last year, despite gatherings being forbidden under Covid rules at the time and that while Afghan servants of British imperialism were left stranded at Kabul airport when the Taliban took over Boris Johnson personally intervened to ensure that dogs and cats of a British-run animal rescue charity were safely evacuated out of the country.
    All of this is coming from sections of the bourgeois media that, until recently, were praising Johnson to the hilt. And what this shows is while Johnson may well have a plan to deal with another Covid upsurge others clearly have an alternative “Plan B” to push him aside before the next election.
    It’s not just the Tories Remainers – though they’ve clearly got a lot of old scores to settle with Johnson – its the others in the corridors of power who increasingly see Johnson as anh electoral embarrassment as well as a barrier to restoring the “special relationship” with US imperialism.
    Labour should be having a field day over this crisis of confidence within the ranks of the ruling class but all Starmer seems interested is in hounding out what’s left of the Corbynistas inside the Labour Party he claims to lead.
    Anger at his incompetent and useless leadership has now spread throughout the labour movement as a whole. Sharon Graham, the new leader of Unite, has already told Starmer & Co that they can expect no more than the affiliation fees from her union in the future and the demand to cut financial support to Labour is growing in other unions as well.

Grovelling to the White House

In the past crawling to the Americans was almost compulsory for Tory and Labour leaders who would drone on and on about “partnership” and the “special relationship” to justify British imperialism’s slavish support of American power throughout the world. But Johnson has taken it to a new level in a bid to restore his government’s credibility in the White House.
    Last week British envoys joined the Americans in a diplomatic offensive in Kiev to try and push their Nato allies into supporting more sanctions against Russia to prop up the Ukrainian puppet regime. Now they’ve joined hands with the Americans and Israel to support the continued Zionist occupation of Syria’s Golan Heights, which were captured during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.
    The resolution reaffirmed that settlement construction and any other Israeli activities constitute a change in the demographic nature of the occupied Syrian Golan. It called on Israel to resume peace talks and withdraw from the occupied Syrian Golan in accordance with the border lines of 4th June1967.
    At the UN General Assembly members overwhelmingly affirmed Syria’s sovereignty at a session last week in vote carried by 94 with 69 abstentions
    Israel was supported by just seven other states : the US, the UK, Australia, Canada, and three tiny Pacific island states – the Marshall Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia, and Palau – that are little more than American protectorates.

A disaster in the Channel

At least 31 refugees died trying to cross the English Channel from France to England when their dinghy sank off the northern coast of Calais last week. Boris Johnson said he was “was shocked and appalled and deeply sad by the loss of life” and French president French President Emmanuel Macron said his country would not let the Channel become a cemetery.
    But they only churn out these platitudes to absolve themselves from any responsibility for these needless deaths by pinning the blame on criminal gangs that allegedly run an illicit trade in human trafficking
    In the past bourgeois politicians and upheld the rights of defectors when they were used as political pawns during the Cold War. Tens of thousands of Poles and Ukrainians opposed to the socialist systems in their own countries were allowed to settle in Britain after the Second World War and the doors remained open for the Vietnamese “boat people” who, we were told, were victims of “communist oppression”. But its a different call when refugees and asylum seekers are no longer of any use to the ruling class.
    The New Communist Party recognises the need for any sovereign state to set an immigration policy in accordance with its resources. But we firmly oppose any immigration policy that discriminates, either directly or indirectly, on the basis of race, creed, colour or gender. Britain must abide by the principles it claims to uphold in dealing with refugees and asylum seekers. They must be treated humanely while they wait for their settlement claims to ve settled. The procedures must be speeded up and the dismal detention camps must go.
    The New Communist Party calls for the repeal of the Immigration and Asylum Acts of the 1990s, passed by both Tory and Labour governments, which make it very difficult for many genuine asylum seekers to establish their claims.
    Asylum seekers must be treated humanely and their claims dealt with swiftly. While this process takes place they must be given decent accommodation and welfare benefits to survive. No asylum seekers should be locked up unless there is good reason, with evidence, to believe they are criminals and no child asylum seeker should ever be locked up.

A tragedy for Labour

Not a day goes by, it seems, without someone’s expulsion from the Labour Party. Most people have lost track of the Corbynistas who’ve been suspended these days. It began with trumped-up charges of “anti-Semitism”. Now it been extended to “auto-exclude” anyone associated with Socialist Appeal, the Labour in Exile Network, Labour Against the Witchhunt and Resist. And it’s being applied retrospectively to condemn Labour members for taking part in events with members of banned groups in the past, even though they weren’t banned at the time.
    Taken to its logical conclusion, the Blairites should now move to expel any dead members they don’t like on the same grounds. Tony Benn would top the list. Sir Keir Starmer QC, the great “forensic” silk, could easily find some sort of legal precedent for posthumous expulsion. He could point to the precedent set by Charles II, who had the remains of Oliver Cromwell and the other dead “regicides” dug up and ceremonially hanged in public when the monarchy was restored in 1660.
    But Starmer beware. The Pharaohs and Caesars did this sort of thing big time to those they deemed traitors or blasphemers and look what happened to them…

Socialism, the Choice of the Chinese People

Ambassador Zheng Zeguang opens the seminar

On 23rd November, the Chinese Embassy in London held an online symposium on the Sixth Plenary Session of the 19th Communist Party of China Central Committee, where Ambassador Zheng Zeguang delivered a keynote speech. Andy Brooks, General Secretary of the New Communist Party of Britain, Robert Griffiths, General Secretary of the Communist Party of Britain, Ella Rule, Chair of the CPGB (ML), Martin Jacques, a renowned expert on China, and Stephen Perry, Chair of the 48 Group Club, spoke at the event.

    Also present were Professor Martin Albrow, a fellow at the Academy of Social Sciences in London; Sir Martin Davidson, Chair of the Great Britain-China Centre; and representatives of various other political parties, experts, scholars and representatives from the International Liaison Department of the Chinese Communist Party. This is Andy Brooks’ contribution to the discussion.

First of all, I would like to thank the organisers for allowing me to say a few words at this seminar focusing on the major achievements and historical experience of the Communist Party of China (CPC) over the last 100 years of its existence.
    For a communist party to have survived for 100 years is, in itself, something to celebrate. To have led the Chinese people to victory is another. To raise the millions upon millions of the Chinese people out of poverty to build the modern socialist society that we see today is a third. And this is only the beginning of the march of progress in the 21st century.
    Feudal China was once the workshop of the world. When the people’s government was established in 1949 China had the lowest standard of living in the world. Today China can now not only feed, clothe and educate its people, but also provide consumer goods and living standards for working people unimaginable before liberation. China has a modern expanding economy that has withstood the current global capitalist crisis to once again become the workshop of the world and is sharing its prosperity through the Belt and Road Initiative that spans the globe.
    One-hundred years have passed since the foundation of the CPC on 23rd July 1921. China has risen from being a weak semi-feudal, semi-colonial country to become a force for peace in the global arena with the second largest economy in the world.
    In the past China’s wealth was the preserve of a ruthless, feudal ruling class. These days China’s wealth is being used to finally eradicate the last vestiges of poverty, raise the standard of living of everyone in the people’s republic, and help the development of the Third World through genuine fair trade and economic assistance.
    This is the glorious achievement of the CPC which led the resistance that defeated the Japanese imperialists and the reactionary Chinese warlords and politicians in the pay of American imperialism, to establish the people’s government on 1st October 1949.
    Discussion is a luxury communists can afford and as we join our Chinese comrades in celebrating their hundred years of victory, we can ask ourselves many questions.
    The collapse of the Soviet Union and the people’s democracies in eastern Europe led to calls in some communist quarters for a new communist international – calls that are still made from time to time in some parts of the movement. But we cannot restore what has gone before us without first understanding why it failed in the first place. And that understanding cannot come from reading books or simply trying to transpose one experience to another.
    Chinese communists always stress that socialism with Chinese characteristics cannot be exported and that their revolution is not a model for others to copy slavishly. But we very rarely, at least in Western Europe, ask ourselves why?
    The answer in part is based on the struggle of the Chinese communists to overcome dogmatism and sectarianism to eventually build a people’s democracy in their own way, to serve the needs of the working people of China.
    Commenting on the rise of the bourgeoisie in France, Marx famously said that history repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce. Communists too can make mistakes, but unlike the bourgeoisie we consciously try to learn from past mistakes in order to avoid future ones.
    In Europe, the mistake was clearly to elevate slavishly what was believed to be the ‘Soviet model’, even though few Western communists even really understood what the Soviet Union actually was. The Soviet Union wasn’t a ‘people’s democracy’ in the sense we understand it now. It was a unique state based on Soviet power, and whilst its economic structures could be imitated – as they were after a fashion in eastern Europe – the Soviet political system could not.
    Following the Soviet victory in the Second World War, the revolutionary upsurge that followed led to the establishment of people’s democracies throughout Eastern Europe on the same basis as the people’s democratic dictatorship was established in China in 1949. The question was how long would this transition take?
    In the beginning, people’s democracy was seen as a lengthy process. Initially it was believed that the length of the road to socialism would depend upon the development of social and economic factors in each individual country. But Cold War tensions led to the rapid incorporation of most of the European people’s democracies into a Soviet economic and military bloc, which later proved incapable of withstanding the counter-revolutionary pressures of the 1980s. The Chinese communists clearly believe that the transitional period, at least as far as their immense country is concerned, will be a lengthy process. But it is a socialist process.
    Any hopes that imperialists held that China was ‘going down the capitalist road’ were dealt a severe blow at the 2019 Congress of the CPC, where Xi Jinping reminded delegates that: “Socialism with Chinese characteristics is socialism, not any other ‘ism’. Both history and our present reality tell us that only socialism can save China – and only socialism with Chinese characteristics can develop China. This is the conclusion of history, the choice of our people.”

Beware the Ides of March

That was the warning Julius Caesar foolishly ignored on his way to the forum during the last days of the old Roman republic. Caesar thought he was favoured by the gods. Boris Johnson has no such excuse.
    Johnson’s shambolic performance at the CBI’s annual conference this week was clearly the last straw for a growing band of Tory MPs who want Johnson out before the next election.
    The knives are out for Boris and there’s no shortage of those willing to take his place. Jeremy Hunt wants another crack at the Tory leadership and the Chancellor, Rishi Sunak, does little to mask his ambitions. Even Liz Truss, the newly promoted foreign minister, is said to be interested in entering the race, if and when it happens.
    And that can could come early in the New Year, with some MPs already calling for the Prime Minister to step down following his failure to put the lid on the sleaze scandals that have rocked the Johnson administration in recent weeks.
    Around a dozen dissident MPs have submitted letters of no confidence to the chair of the powerful 1922 Committee of Tory backbenchers. This is still well short of the 15 per cent needed to trigger a leadership challenge, but that could easily change if the crisis of confidence in the Johnson government gains momentum amongst the voters in the Tory shires and the heartlands of suburbia that the Tories rely on to keep them in office.
    The leadership of the Conservative & Unionist Party means nothing to workers who have no say in choosing who should be the parliamentary representative of the dominant section of the British ruling class. The future of the Tory party is matter of complete indifference to us. It’s the future of the labour movement that counts.

High speed derailment

The RMT rail union has denounced the scrapping of the eastern leg of the HS2 high-speed rail line, which the union says essentially tears up the Government’s levelling up agenda and its own climate change commitments. The Johnson government’s U-turn on key rail projects is a “great northern rail betrayal”. It’s a view also shared by Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer, who said Labour was committed to the full HS2 proposals and Northern Powerhouse rail.
    What we really need is a genuinely integrated transport system that can only come through public ownership. The re-nationalisation of British Airways and the bus and rail companies would enable future governments build an eco-friendly, integrated transport system across Britain. But it would require immense investment that can only come from the coffers of the state.
    “Our climate and communities cannot afford false political choices between different rail projects when what we need is all these projects to go ahead and a historic mass investment in our railways that gets people out of cars and onto trains and public transport. But instead we get more Tory austerity, cut backs and attacks on rail workers’ jobs and rail services,” the RMT says. “Public transport investment pays for itself through the economic benefits it brings and it’s time the government took a proper long-term approach that reflects that fact.”

Shaken, not stirred!

by Ben Soton

No Time to Die (2021): EON Productions for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Cert 12A; 2hrs 43mins. Stars: Daniel Craig, Ana de Armas, Léa Seydoux and Rami Malek. Director: Cary Joji Fukunaga. Writers (story and screenplay): Neal Purvis, Robert Wade and Cary Joji Fukunaga.

Earlier this year I renewed the insurance for my relatively modest hatchback. Like most motorists, I was shocked at the exorbitant cost. As I watched the car chase in the latest James Bond film, No Time to Die, I wondered what the cost would be if I had stated my name was Bond, James Bond.
    The English answer to ‘Batman’ with his bizarre gadgets and his “licence to kill” was a man whom many teenage boys in the 1960s want to be. The creation of former Naval Intelligence Officer Ian Fleming, the original books were written in the 1950s and the film spin-offs have been going strong since 1962.
    No Time to Die begins where the previous film Spectre left off, with Bond driving off into the sunset with femme fatal Madeline Swan (played by Lea Seydoux). His idyllic life with Swan is interrupted by a series of dramatic events and the uncovering of the usual evil plot.
    Bond soon returns to his old job at MI6, only to find his position has been filled by another agent. An evil genius threatens humanity with a virus spread by nano-bots inside the bloodstream; not far from the conspiracies spread by the anti-vaccine brigade. There is an ironic choice of the film’s theme tune of Louis Armstrong’s All the Time in The World; the same music as On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, where Bond’s new wife (played by Diana Rigg) dies in the final scene.
    Many liberals point out that in Daniel Craig’s films, of which {No Time to Die} is number five, the position of women has changed significantly since the days of Sean Connery. This misses the point, however. In every film, Bond defends the status quo. At the climax of the film Bond confronts the villain Safin (played by Remi Malek), who points out that he wants to change the world and Bond wants to keep things the same. Bond describes people who want to change the world as angry little men; thus, the message of the films is that change equals madness. In other words, a thoroughly reactionary narrative.
    Safin’s choice of base is in the Kurill Islands, a territory disputed between Russia and Japan. The base is surrounded by decaying Soviet iconography, creating a false connection between socialism and evil madmen threatening global stability.
    Although most Bond films promote a reactionary narrative there are two possible exceptions: the 1977 film The Spy Who Loved Me, where Bond works with a Soviet agent; and the 1997 film Tomorrow Never Dies, where he collaborates with an operative from People’s China. Even in these films however, he was still defending the status quo.
    Ultimately, the Bond franchise remains one of the most successful in Western cinematic history and I do not blame anyone for watching them. Sadly the Soviets’ answer to 007, the far most sophisticated Colonel Stierlitz, has still to be aired by a British broadcaster.

Comrade you have fallen. Take my hand

by John Maryon

An important indicator of how caring and benevolent any society actually is can be seen from the way in which it treats those with serious disabilities or suffering the anguish of mental illness. Those unfortunate men and women need extra loving care to enable them to lead as fuller life as possible and to live with dignity without financial worries. There should also be greater awareness that those who care for others need more support. However in Britain today essential services have been cut back and it has become increasingly difficult for those in need to qualify for support.
    `Benefit sanctions have been used on the flimsiest of excuses when the patient may have been too sick to travel or was unable make the journey to attend interview for another genuine reason. Premature deaths, including by suicide, are associated with benefit sanctions. Cuts to legal aid have made it more difficult for disabled people to challenge the unfair decisions.
    The Work Capability Assessment (WCA) is a computer based assessment programme for welfare claimants. The system is used to analyse the limited capacity for work component of Universal Credit (UC) . A number of private companies have carried out the work on behalf of the DWP. The test has faced strong criticism with concerns that it may deprive genuinely disabled people of support. A number of people have sadly died within weeks of being found fit for work.
    Universal Credit is a benefit claimed by 5.8 million people in the UK of which 40 per cent are in work on low pay. The benefit replaced a range of other benefits, including tax credits and unemployment allowance and is significantly less generous than the previous system. It was shown just how critically dependent those in poverty have become when ending the £20 additional Covid payment resulted in a large increase in the dependency on food banks.
    If anyone who lives in a council, or housing association, property has a spare bedroom the housing cost element of UC may be reduced. This is often referred to as the bedroom tax. This measure has hit disabled people below the qualifying age for State Pension Credit. Many need specially adapted homes with extra rooms for equipment or separate sleeping. They are now supposed to seek, smaller unadapted accommodation or face higher rent charges.
    The daily lives of those suffering disabilities is made more difficult by potholed pavements. Access to many public buildings can be extremely difficult for wheelchair users and a large number of railway stations do not have lifts to enable passengers to change platforms. The attitude of society must be changed and awareness increased of the problems that disabled people have to face.

The New Communist Party has a firm commitment and makes a number of important calls:

*Replacing the WCA scheme with an assessment programme carried out by HNS doctors and independent specialists.

*Ending the cruel process of sanctions.

*Abolishing bedroom tax for disabled persons.

*Restoration of full legal aid to challenge unfair decisions.

*The abolition of means testing for all benefits.

*Local authorities to finance workshops to employ more disabled persons.

*Firms to be encouraged to employ more disabled people.

*Scrapping UC and restoring fair targeted benefits.

The NCP believes that the pressures of living under Capitalism are responsible for much of the epidemic of anxiety and depression that is sweeping Britain and the Western world today. Money worries, long hours, job insecurity and social isolation due to changes in work patterns all contribute to the problem. All this is occurring at a time when Mental Health Provision has become the Cinderella of the NHS. Cutbacks to staff and facilities have not been matched by care in the community. Do-gooders just making an effort at Christmas to secure a better seat in heaven amounts to a denial of responsibility.
    Mental health services are desperately trying to cope and the problem is getting worse. Health trusts have been discharging patients into the care of GPs. who may not have the experience or resources necessary to deal with the challenges, or to private care providers. Drugs and psychiatric help can allievate the symptoms but when the patient returns to the environment of raw capitalism that may have contributed to their illness the condition could return.
    The NCP calls for greater funding for mental health services to be improved and expanded. Those who care for mentally sick patients at home should be given more financial and practical help, including greater opportunities for respite. We must mobilise the working class to fight against the destruction of our health service based upon need not profit.
    Communists believe that many neurotic illnesses can be tackled by improved working conditions along with better support from both health and social services. The ruling class has been brutally effective in undermining working class collective consciousness so that workers can feel that they are stigmatised and alone. The NCP calls on the Labour Party and the TUC to energetically campaign for shorter hours, lower retirement age and radical improvements in social service provision.
    Again the notorious WCA to which mental health patients may be subjected has it's negative effects. This test amounts to cruelty and can not only aggravate anxiety but also in some cases cause the condition to develop in those who did not have it.
    The NCP calls for a big investment in facilities to assist those trying to break alcohol and drug dependency. More trained staff and better access to centres for rehabilitation. Proper care by professionals is needed. The patients should not languish in prison or be left to die on the streets. Drug dependency issues must not be regarded as criminal and should be dealt with by well funded NHS and social service departments.
    Communists agree that those people with long term physical and mental health problems should be helped to develop their abilities as far as possible and become full members of society but at their own pace. Above all it is the removal of capitalism and its replacement by a caring socialist society that can provide great benefit. Comrades who have fallen will find many helping hands when we turn our socialist dream into reality.